


Mermaid Manipulation

by Kiwi Stubbly-Punk (cranky__crocus)



Series: Harry Potter Fests '11 [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: dysfuncentine, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-20
Updated: 2011-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-05 12:31:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/406424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cranky__crocus/pseuds/Kiwi%20Stubbly-Punk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's another Monday morning; Amelia Bones is hardly pleased.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mermaid Manipulation

**Author's Note:**

> Written for dysfuncentine (Livejournal comm) for 2011. More when I've re-read and edited again.

“I think you’ll find I _did_ include that information, section 17.3, Chapter Three of your handbook. I do believe I’m not mistaken in thinking I left it on your desk earlier this morning?” A forced giggle followed this question. “Perhaps you haven’t read through it completely—or perhaps not carefully enough—”  
  
Monday morning, Amelia Bones mused as she stood with her tea. There was little in the world she had less appreciation for than a Monday morning. One of those things, regrettably, was Dolores Umbridge. Dearest Dolores seemed to be up to no good—as she often was—flaunting her position of power over a new trainee.  
  
This Monday morning, then, was to start with a rescue mission.  
  
“Dolores!” Amelia called amicably, or what she hoped appeared a semblance of such. “I wanted to discuss with you your most recent literature—mermaids, I believe? It was a fascinating read…”  
  
Nymphadora remained fixed to her spot; Amelia caught the words ‘don’t _have_ a desk!’ under the trainee’s breath. Amelia gestured at the young woman with her fingers, urging her to high-tail it; she couldn’t risk more with Dolores turning to stare.  
  
“Amelia. A pleasure to see you down below the second floor, I assure you!”  
  
Amelia wished she could proclaim the same. Instead, she lifted her tea to the woman. “Share a cuppa as we discuss the merit—or malice—of mermaids?”  
  
While Dolores considered the invitation, Amelia nudged Tonks, who gazed up at her, still flustered and flushed with anger.  
  
“You owe me quality tea time,” Amelia whispered, surprisingly gentle given she had just willingly combined two of her least favourite things: Dolores Umbridge and Monday Morning. As far as she was concerned, she was taking three stunners for this little trainee runt; she ought to get tea for the deal. “And I would suggest you _run_.”  
  
She turned to hear Dolores answer, “Yes, Amelia, I have nothing of importance this morning and tea would be _lovely_. Now, with the weight of Cornelius Fudge behind the measure, what do you think of the likelihood of enforcing mermaid legislation…?”  
  
Amelia watched Tonks hurry off—tripping over a portable teacart and narrowly missing a memo to the eye—and disdainfully deliberated the idea of a morning with ‘nothing of importance.’ She sighed and manoeuvred into step with Dolores toward the Atrium’s corner seats.  
  
“It really is not in my jurisdiction to say,” Amelia responded at last, relieved once more that her Department ranked high in Secrecy. “Though I imagine it would require an unimaginable amount of gillyweed…”  
  
Monday mornings—they were the sort of thing that just didn’t grow on a person.  
  
***  
  
“Nymphadora, hello,” Amelia greeted as the trainee walked by her open office door. It was a Friday afternoon, thus exponentially more agreeable than their meeting four days before. Additionally, Dolores Umbridge was back to her ruling and drooling a floor above them.  
  
Nymphadora doubled back and peeked her now-red head of hair into the doorframe; Amelia was sure the hair had been pink a second before.  
  
“It’s Tonks, please,” Tonks stated. The ‘please’ seemed a perfunctory acknowledgement of Amelia’s superior rank; she didn’t mind.  
  
“Tonks. You owe me something.”  
  
Tonks coloured visibly—more so than with others, given the darker tinge to her hair to match the red of her cheeks—and stepped hesitantly into the room. “I do?”  
  
Amelia tucked her monocle between her eyebrow and cheek to stare down the young trainee, just to watch her squirm. At last Amelia offered a small grin. “You do. I faintly recall a chivalrous action and the promise of quality tea time.”  
  
Tonks stood stock-still. When the memory recurred, a smile appeared on her lips as they and her hair distinctly pinked. “For saving me from Dolores. I still don’t know what she was on about…”  
  
“Then I will explain over tea. How does—” Amelia glanced down at her pocket watch “—two hours from now sound? I believe trainees are finished showering and slapping each other’s bottoms with towels at that point… Well, if things haven’t changed overmuch since my own training days.”  
  
The blush was back, but Tonks’ hair grew only pinker. “They haven’t. Two hours and I’ll be dressed and waiting in the Atrium.”  
  
Amelia nodded. As Tonks was leaving, Amelia muttered a gruff but quiet, “Everyone wanting to get me below the second floor…”  
  
Tonks peeked her blue-tinged head around the doorframe once more, grinning. “I just think the fountain’s stunning.”  
  
Amelia couldn’t fault her logic.  
  
***  
  
Amelia expressed her regard for the young woman by allowing her to select their teashop. Tonks did not hesitate in selecting Knightealy, entered through the Muggle shop Whittard of Chelsea on Strand Street, not far from Whitehall. Amelia was impressed: she had been there before, of course, but had more importantly discovered a rather impressive selection of teas. It was also not as sickly-sweet as many London teashops with their sparkling frosted muffins, shining cakes and polished decorations; this shop was decorated in 1930s style and sold desserts far less likely to induce seizures.  
  
“Not a bad selection,” Amelia praised—for her sort—once they had turned the correct Muggle china set and been pulled through the shop’s large model cake.  
  
The afternoon hustle and bustle of the shop had long passed as the shop would close in another two hours. Regardless, they were greeted cordially by the woman behind the counter. Amelia ordered strong English tea with a splash of milk; Tonks purchased a hot chocolate and a slice of pixie-pearl cake, offering her companion a brief but effective ‘no comment on my sweet tooth’ look before they walked to a corner table.  
  
“Why was Umbridge all up on my broom the other day?” Tonks questioned as soon as her bottom touched her seat—Amelia may have been watching.  
  
Amelia grinned in response. Tonks was certainly an Auror of action rather than tact, as many others Amelia had known. Amelia answered with a slow question, “How does your appearance change when you are put on the spot by someone of authority who intimidates you but whom you do not respect?”  
  
Tonks’ eyebrow journeyed up at the specific question. “My hair greys or goes white; I look smaller; I get unsure. _Why_?”  
  
“Dolores probably thought you were Mafalda Hopkirk or a witch from the Department of Magical Education division; she has never bothered to learn their faces.” Amelia shook her head, disgusted at Dolores’ refusal to know those she would gladly step on.  
  
Tonks frowned and sipped her hot chocolate, a touch of cream clinging to the fine hairs above her top lip; she brushed it off before Amelia could laugh. “At least explains why she thought I had a desk. I had no idea what she was on about.”  
  
“Nor do the majority of us,” Amelia responded with a quirked grin. She sipped her tea and sighed. There was little better than the first post-work tea on a Friday. “After our first meeting I spent an hour and a half learning just how malicious mermaids are. She even listed ‘polyamory’ as one of their worst faults; she could not believe such creatures were allowed to continue on Hogwarts campus. She suggested mass culling.”  
  
“‘Cause mermaids are equal-opportunity lovers?” Tonks rebuffed, seemingly caught between amusement and revulsion. “Dolores would hate me.”  
  
“She hates anyone who would disagree with her and half the people who agree. Generally on the Wizengamot we stick with the rule of thumb that if you are not from the first floor, you will not have Dolores’ regard.”  
  
“I’m a Hufflepuff burrower—deeper the better,” Tonks retorted immediately. Her hair had gained a red tinge throughout the conversation; she took a mouthful of hot chocolate and her hair recaptured its previous pink.  
  
Amelia’s eyebrows rose, her monocle dropping away and drawing attention to her interested and prideful smile. “From one badger to another.”  
  
When Tonks glanced up, it was evident that she, too, was interested. Amelia was sure the amount of tongue Tonks utilised for her next bite of cake was not strictly necessary. She couldn’t, however, say that she minded.  
  
“How are you regarding utmost secrecy?” Amelia pondered, affecting detached disinterest; she couldn’t hide the interest from her gaze, however, and Tonks mirrored it.  
  
“I’m training to be an Auror—secrecy is our game,” Tonks answered immediately, a smirk developing on reddening lips.  
  
“And you are aware that my position is above yours?”  
  
“Not quite the way I’d like.”  
  
Amelia felt a very specific stirring in her trousers, breathed deeply and thought of the Minister to remove it temporarily. She sighed and chose the direct route, one Hufflepuff to another. “Can I _trust_ you, explicitly, to keep quiet?”  
  
Tonks’ features were as serious as Amelia’s had seen them in their short time of acquaintanceship. The young woman’s response was low and solemn. “I have just as much to lose. You can trust me. I expect the same.”  
  
Amelia nodded. Settled, then.  
  
***  
  
Their next meeting occurred in the same seats precisely a week later. Tonks was looking distinctly closer to a tomato in colouration than she had the week prior.  
  
“Cleaverdon can be such a sexist _prick_ ,” she raged as she sat across from Amelia, who hid her smile behind a cup of tea. The old Auror trainer was still agitating the female folk, then.  
  
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Amelia replied after replacing her cup on the table. She knit her hands together on the table top and grinned to see Tonks do the same. “He does it to train the women harder. Statistically speaking, female Aurors rank higher immediately after graduation from the programme; the men need time to catch up with learning out in the field. He knows women tend to pick up more from the programme itself. But tell me, what does he think of your inadvertent morphing?”  
  
“He thinks it’ll get me in trouble some day and that I’m wasting Metamorphmagus potential. I think it’s why he’s so hard on me especially.”  
  
Amelia’s eyebrow rose. “And do you agree?”  
  
Tonks looked discouraged as she responded; even if she hadn’t, her quickly bluing hair would have revealed her inner disappointment. “I do.”  
  
“Would you like training in how to control yourself?”  
  
“You know how?” Tonks’ hair lighted again with the hopeful ring to her inflection.  
  
“I was friends with a Metamorphmagus in the year above me; she learned things the hard way through her lifetime and developed a training regime of sorts. It’s not well known—and not Ministry-sanctioned—for a reason, though, Tonks. It strikes at your weaknesses and strikes to _hurt_ —first to inhibit inadvertent morphing and then to train you into _intended_ morphing. My friend found training to be most effective in…carnal moments, when we are in least control. This would bear no resemblance to your daily training routine. There is also no room for uncertainty—you must be sure, or you must not agree.”  
  
Amelia took a moment to attend only to her tea, providing Tonks with an uninterrupted moment with her thoughts.  
  
“I want this,” she said at last. Amelia searched her face for any signs of reluctance and found none; she nodded and finished her tea.  
  
“Have you ever heard of a safeword?”  
  
***  
  
“This is your last chance to refuse,” Amelia reminded as she finished rolling her shirt sleeves to her elbows. Tonks watched the ample musculature of Amelia’s forearms as she worked. “I’ve described it in enough detail; refuse at your will.”  
  
“I’m not refusing.”  
  
Amelia huffed, but her lips quirked into a wicked grin. “Then you will learn that work in the Ministry is not about who you are, but who you have to be for each mission. You are an untapped source. You cannot live at the whim of your ephemeral emotions.”  
  
Tonks’ hair flushed red. Her lips parted, but Amelia spoke over her.  
  
“You’re enraged.” The back of Amelia’s hand slapped across Tonks’ face, not hard but not soft either. “ _I_ should not see or feel it. Keep it under your skin.”  
  
Tonks’ lips pressed together as Amelia continued watching, barely blinking through her stare. The hair returned to pink, but Tonks’ eyes morphed to a teary blue.  
  
Amelia flicked her ear. “You’re offended and upset: you didn’t think I’d go there. You’ve never been read so easily—but you are wrong, because you are a walking advertisement of your emotions and hormones. Focus on your image—the stone, the still lake, the clear sky, whatever it may be. Don’t let me rustle it.”  
  
“But you _do_!” Tonks exploded, red hot with rage (yet, Amelia noted, her irises were purple). Her voice was ragged and low—lower, Amelia thought, than it could have been with the woman’s previous range, and possibly implying altered anatomy; it was endlessly impressive and _wasted_ if Tonks could not keep control of her emotions. “You are a hammer, a pebble and a storm—I _can’t_ keep calm around you! It’s bloody useless trying!”  
  
“Then prepare for a lesson in impossibility,” Amelia growled as she pressed Tonks to the opposite wall. “If you can’t keep composed around me, you’ve no business out in the field against the darkest of magic.”  
  
Tonks’ eyes grew darker yet as her hair turned blacker by the second; Amelia frowned at further involuntary changes. Tonks’ bottom lip quivered once before she bit it. Amelia brought the woman’s hands above her head and held them together at the wrist. Wordlessly, she parted Tonks’ robes and slipped her hand beneath the laces of her trousers and the cotton material of her knickers; from there Amelia yanked them down.  
  
The draft of air caught Tonks by surprise; she sucked in a breath and hissed it out, hips squirming against the material of her robes. Her neck stretched upward in response to Amelia’s lips on her collarbones; she cried out when Amelia bit the revealed length of her neck.  
  
These responses were nothing compared to the amplitude of her call at the arrival of Amelia’s probing fingers between her legs.  
  
“Control,” Amelia urged in the young woman’s ear. “ _Control_.”  
  
“Could—could _you_ control at—at a time like this?” Tonks growled, heaving her effort into manoeuvring one leg between Amelia’s trouser-clad thighs.  
  
“I could,” Amelia gloated as she thumbed the sensitive nub. “But it isn’t imperative for _me_ : I won’t unintentionally grow a penis in a moment of passion.”  
  
“Maybe you _should_.” Tonks bumped her thigh up to Amelia’s crotch and pressed down on the woman’s fingers.  
  
“You want to anger me.” Amelia only grinned and bent to drag her teeth over Tonks’ nipple, tonguing circles around and above the peeked portion. Tonks moaned and arched.  
  
“I _want_ you to…want you…let me _come_ , I’m not a toy!”  
  
“But you are,” Amelia argued as her fingers stilled once more, “when you are a prisoner to your emotion. Show me your control.”  
  
Tonks glared daggers at her; Amelia did not budge or alter her maddeningly patronising smile. At last the young woman gulped down a breath and breathed it out in a huff, eyes closed and face angled to the ceiling. The next breath was more controlled: inhaled evenly deep into her lungs and exhaled slowly. Her hair lightened from black to purple to dark and light blue until it at last reached pink. The bulge by Amelia’s fingers diminished. Her eyes, when she opened them, were back to brown, not a trace of purple.   
  
Her breathing was not steady—that would be unexpected given her situation—but was considerably less erratic. Tonks took a final breath and watched Amelia. “I’m controlled.”  
  
“Then you can come,” Amelia answered, deceptively simple; her fingers recommenced slightly altered activities to match the shifting terrain of anatomy. When Tonks was once again shaking at the precipice, Amelia released her hands and kneeled to tap at Tonks’ clit with her tongue.  
  
Tonks’ response was equally simple, albeit not deceptively so: “ _Fuck_!”  
  
***  
  
Over the next weeks Amelia continued to meet with Tonks at Knightealy Fridays at 6pm, although Tonks was not always as prompt as Amelia. Occasionally the two shared not a word before Apparating and walking to Amelia’s Muggle home.  
  
Tonks had made considerable progress in her training; her appearance was no longer at the whim of her moment-to-moment emotions. They were on to the next phase of training.   
  
Amelia worked to be sure that Tonks never knew whom Amelia wanted her to be, come the evening. Sometimes Amelia gave hints throughout their meal and conversation; more often she did not and merely listed features before their activities. She sought to be less direct with her cues each time, so Tonks might one day read a person and perform the morph without assistance.  
  
Tonks had expressed that she had always understood she had the potential to be—physically at least—anyone she wished or needed to be, and that morphing without the time and ingredients of Polyjuice Potion was invaluable to most missions. Amelia took care in explaining that this came from practice; if Tonks could keep her character in varied carnal exploits, she would be capable under nearly all other situations. It just meant that Amelia had to vary the intensity and flavour of their sessions as frequently as Tonks’ assignments and the methods of prompting them.  
  
‘Serious. Hard-working, but able to laugh come the occasion. More wrinkles! What do you have me for, someone who beds babes?’  
  
It was a testament to Tonks’ success that she no longer took noticeably visual umbrage at such lines, despite being a wrinkle-less ‘babe’ herself. True, Amelia had not bedded her, but a surface need not be horizontal to be exploited in such ways.  
  
She recalled the occasions during which Tonks realised who she was: Minerva McGonagall (“This is just wrong! She’s a prude!” If only Tonks knew.); Poppy Pomfrey (“I didn’t know she even left the castle.”); Madam Rosmerta (“I don’t even know her last name!”); Griselda Marchbanks (“She’s a century old! She sat my Charms exam both years!”); Pomona Sprout (“This is the most awkward thing I have _ever_ done.”); Rita Skeeter (“You’re taking the piss; I’m sure I’m just a wet dream today.”) There were more she would have known, had she offered it her full attention and surprising acumen.  
  
Tonight Tonks received a picture. She stared at it, seeing but unknowing. Her hair began to change before Amelia spoke—in case she didn’t—but stopped halfway to white.  
  
“Am I ever going to get to be myself again? Do I _always_ have to be someone else? I’m not sure this is even about me anymore.”  
  
Amelia swallowed and took a breath. She unbuttoned her waistcoat and removed it along with her monocle before replying. “Tonight is not about you, or learning as you have previously. Tonight is for me; tonight you can consider payment for your lessons.”  
  
“Surely I can pay for that myself, with my own face. Or is that not hefty enough payment for you?” It was another testament to Tonks’ progress that though her tone grew sharp and accusatory, her features and colouring remained perfectly still. Amelia smiled, softer and sadder than her other seldom smiles. Tonks challenged, “What if I won’t?”  
  
“Then you will have learned control, reading people, camouflage, impeccable impersonations and ease of change, but not empathy—have you never been in my shoes in this way?”  
  
“Aurors don’t need empathy. It seems, from this conversation, they need Slytherin skills at exploitation.” Her comment was as pointed as her stare, her eyes glaring Centaurian arrows with equal accuracy.  
  
Amelia shook her head—slow, as everything felt slow in this moment. “Moody would have both eyes if he had possessed empathy in the past; he is skilled enough in exploitation and manipulation.”  
  
“Shared traits.” Tonks threw up her hands, exasperated. “Surely you’ve already had this woman too! What’s one less impersonation?”  
  
Amelia schooled her features and gazed up at Tonks, a final test of the young woman’s training in reading people. Tonks stared back, first petulant and then with the tense expression of concentration. Her eyes widened as she jolted back.  
  
“You haven’t slept with her. That’s why it’s my payment—it’s the only real gift I can give you. Never accuse me of not having empathy again: I am already in similar shoes.” As she spoke, Tonks’ hair greyed and her body grew wispier, shorter; her face softened to kindness and wrinkles. When she spoke again, her voice was airier—not completely correct, but a close approximation with only pictorial representation. “She’s the unrequited one.”  
  
No words escaped Amelia as she beheld the woman before her, the woman she glimpsed so often in Ministry corridors yet hadn’t shared words with in years, not since husbands and wars and the latter stealing the former prematurely.  
  
Tonks stepped to her, ginger and careful as she never was but had picked up from the picture, and stood before Amelia. She was a head shorter and gazing up with pained hazel eyes—just like the picture from the interview. It broke and healed Amelia’s heart at once, having Mafalda Hopkirk standing before her again.  
  
Amelia encircled the woman’s too-trim waist with shaking arms and pressed a kiss just below her hairline, then two more for good measure. Tonks stretched up, eyes open and seeking, as she pressed her lips to Amelia’s. It was far tenderer than the two had shared previously, but it was the only kiss to draw the strength out of Amelia. She pulled them down into her old recliner, delicately arranging the woman on her lap.  
  
Mafalda smiled, held herself up with two hands on Amelia’s square shoulders, and kissed her silly. Amelia knew in that moment that she would forget this was Tonks at all.  
  
Perhaps Tonks gathered the same idea from that moment, for in the next instant she was gone—a head of pink-fringed grey running out the door.  
  
Amelia held her quivering jaw tight and relived the sensation of love on her lips, even as she guiltily acknowledging that she had taken her training too far.  
  
***  
  
Monday morning came again, as it always did, no matter how glorious or terrible the weekend preceding it. Amelia had mixed feelings regarding her own; the guilt continued, yet her lips had been ghosted with the reality of her true desires, however hidden.  
  
The knock on her office door startled her from her rare reverie. She gestured the visitor in before even deeming a glance up, instead reorganising the skewed stacks of paperwork on her desk and expecting to receive more.  
  
“Amelia.”  
  
The one voice she had _not_ expected was that voice: Mafalda Hopkirk.  
  
Mafalda was staring at her, or at the desk really, and wringing her hands. “I wanted to…to _thank_ you for last night, although ‘thank you’ sounds ridiculous to me now that I’ve heard it. I just never expected you to surprise me with a visit last night—I didn’t think you’d remember where I lived, or…want to come. Come by, I mean.”  
  
She was blushing profusely, something young Tonks had not done since their very first meetings. Indeed, this Mafalda was different; Amelia utilised her senses to identify why.  
  
Perfume—Mafalda _smelled_ liked she always had; her voice was perfect; the sight of her was precious… Amelia only wished she could employ her other senses—touch and taste—to reclaim the full picture.  
  
“You’re busy, I can see you’re busy,” Mafalda said hurriedly; Amelia had waited to speak for too long. “I just wanted to say—”  
  
“Thank you,” Amelia repeated to cut her off, although she could not tell if it was to Mafalda or an absent Tonks—most probably both.   
  
She did not mind, overmuch at least, the idea of Tonks seducing Mafalda as and for her, certainly not so much that it equalled her own guilt in exploiting the young woman and her attachment beyond educational pursuits. If it brought her back to Mafalda, whom she had been too intimidated, frightened and stubborn to approach… well, it was all for the Greater Good, then.  
  
Amelia cleared her throat and removed her monocle, eyes creasing with her smile. “Would you like tea? I know the perfect place…”  
  
***  
  
Knightealy’s was bustling with afternoon activity. Amelia guided Mafalda to the corner seat, which was serendipitously free and surprisingly quiet. Amelia noticed a note stuck to her chair, still warm from a previous patron; the scent diminished Amelia’s surprise regarding the author and the opportune vacancy of her favourite table.  
  
 _Wotcher,  
  
This is a_ real _gift from one badger to another – and a lesson for you to always go after the person you really want. Don’t tell me I never gave you anything, and take care of her, she’s still hurting. I’m sure you’ll never want Real Tonks again, but if it turns out Mafalda shares Dolores’ ‘malicious mermaid’ trait, owl me for some extra fun.  
  
Speaking of Dolores, I don’t take umbrage over any of it or the end or anything, so don’t let the guilt goblins gobble your girdle, as Mum’d say. (Pince taught me ‘umbrage’ back in school—hey, you didn’t sleep with_ her _too, did you?)  
  
Cheers for everything. I’m best of my year now. Celebratory drinks when I shock my mother and become top Auror?  
  
Tonks_  
  
Amelia chuckled and slid the note into her waistcoat pocket, behind the chains of her monocle and pocket watch, leaving her tools of intimidation securely in the pocket. She looked up to find Mafalda smiling, quietly content as she often was but with a spot of confusion, too. She didn’t pry.  
  
“A recent trainee wrote me a thank-you note.”  
  
“It’s heart-warming when students do that, isn’t it?” Mafalda replied with a deeper smile. She gazed to the ceiling in dreams and then right back down. “I sometimes get thank-you notes from witches or wizards I helped free from undue underage sorcery charges.”  
  
“I’m glad; it is heart-warming. But mine doesn’t owe me half the gratitude I owe her.”  
  
“Let’s discuss it over tea, shall we?” Mafalda took a step toward the counter and Amelia smiled to see that she was just as gentle and polite with her subdued impatience as she had always been.  
  
“How ‘bout we brush that aside; we have much to catch up on and I fear you’re a whole new person to me now.”  
  
Mafalda brushed her hand between Amelia’s inner wrist and outer thigh, the smile on her face never dropping or hinting at her action. “I wouldn’t go that far. I’m still Mafalda.”  
  
Amelia was glad to hear it, but despite Tonks’ words, guilt still gobbled her. She paused at the counter and turned to her companion. “On second thought, let’s do discuss it over tea. I have a lengthy story to tell you; I know stories are your favourite. This has all your favourite elements: school girls, whirlwind romances, hard times, character death, aging, students, unrequited love, deceit and reconciliation. You’ll just have to tell me if it has a happy ending—and perhaps if you like mermaids.”  
  
That morning Amelia was reminded of one of her favourite Mafalda traits: forgiveness. It was not a trait Amelia was versed in, but with Mafalda’s she felt on the correct path.  
  
Mafalda’s hand touched and squeezed Amelia’s as a first response, all forgiveness and understanding; it removed the sting from her frown. “Amelia, of course I am upset, but…I would be withholding truth if I didn’t admit that after Robert died, I slept with and heart-broke a number of men similar yet less handsome than you in an attempt to deny feelings I still had. I never thought you would forgive me for rejecting you and for loving and running off with Roger.”   
  
She paused and stroked the back of Amelia’s palm, gentle and slow, methodical and reverent. “If it took Tonks to get me to finally side-step your stubbornness, so be it—I’m more a mermaid than I thought. Although I feel it’s only fair I meet this Tonks as herself; she gave me something she wanted more than anything—that’s a person worth meeting. And I’d love to see what impersonation of me made my Amelia Bones so weak in the knees.”  
  
Amelia laughed and slipped her other hand over Mafalda’s, strong palm covering dainty little hands. “I’m forgiven?”  
  
“By me, yes; Tonks made her own decision to come to me—though Tonks deserves a deep apology from you.” Mafalda gazed at their linked hands, blushing profusely. Her next words were softer—embarrassment, amusement and interest melted into near-whispers. “I’ve…experimented some, since Roger passed—after 50 years with one man, I felt it was time. Maybe, I mean…perhaps we can thank Tonks together, her as fully herself, as her note suggested. She’s…she’s, ah, not the only one who knows what a safeword is.”  
  
Amelia laughed and kissed Mafalda’s hand above each knuckle.  
  
Sometimes, even in the Ministry, you could be precisely who you wanted to be and with the person you wanted. And sometimes, even Monday mornings could grow on a person.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :D


End file.
